Wish Fulfillment
by kinselllas
Summary: Any prompts I wrote for will be posted here!
1. Untitled

**A/N: **A lot of people requested a season one DB fic so this is what I came up with. It's sort of a season one redo and very loose canon with some AU scenes worked in. Anyway, enjoy!

As he's climbing into the town car, he glances over his shoulder and finds her glaring back at him. He considers this a victory, seeing her with her arms crossed, eyes narrowed.

He thinks he might see the slightest of smirks on her lips. It makes his stomach twist.

Dan gets in the car and doesn't think about it again.

Until that fucking brunch, and he could tell she was up to something as soon as he saw the smile on her face, because Blair Waldorf does not smile when she sees Dan Humphrey.

When Serena and Nate catch up to her, Dan feels like he's trapped in some weird twisted love triangle, except he's not a point on the triangle. He's just watching from the middle.

Chuck rasps something about his sister and Dan shoves him backward. When he turns to leave, it doesn't escape him that Blair is standing with a devious smirk on her face.

He watches Serena on that stage, talking about everything the Ostroff center has done for her, and Dan doesn't think he knows her at all. Except that when Jenny tells him it's her brother who's a patient there, not Serena, he thinks that maybe he was right after all.

So when he sees Blair walking back inside, he follows her, grabbing her wrist as she strolls down the hallway.

"Why did you do that? Why are you so determined to humiliate her?"

Blair rolls her eyes, ripping her wrist from his grasp, "She humiliated me! She slept with my boyfriend and then abandoned me. Whatever you think you know about her, you're wrong. She's not the person you think she is."

Dan searches Blair's eyes and he wants to feel a bit sorry for her, but he knows she would hate him if he did. Not that she doesn't hate him already.

"That may be true," Dan starts, sighing softly, "but you might not know her as well as you think you do either."

He doesn't stick around when he sees Eric van der Woodsen standing behind her.

"Normally I wouldn't be this close to you without a tetanus shot."

It should sting, but the crack in her voice gives her away. He returns the favor by cracking a smile and sitting down next to her.

He tells her about his mom abandoning his family, and they find that it might actually be something they have in common.

Blair watches the earnest look in his eyes, the lack of judgement. She decidedly does not hate Dan Humphrey. She may not like him, but no, she certainly doesn't hate him.

As months pass, Dan realizes how wrong Blair was about Serena, but also how wrong _he _was about _Blair_.

He was initially put off by her constant jabs at his wardrobe and personality, but overtime realizes it's her own special way of showing affection. He supposes it makes sense, due to her strained relationship with her mother and father.

She likes to mess with him, likes when he furrows his brow or narrows his eyes because he doesn't know the answer to one of her questions.

He seems to provide some sort of entertainment to her and he doesn't mind. He likes to see her entertained.

He's at a party with Serena when a hand yanks him into a dark hallway, lingering close to his body.

_Blair_.

She had just broken up with Nate to give him time to figure things out with his family. Dan doesn't move, just rests a hand against the wall above her while his gaze flickers over her lips.

She's more beautiful than he'd care to admit, especially when his girlfriend is nearly feet away most likely looking for him.

"Touch me," she whispers, and there's an innocence in her eyes.

_How long have they ignored her?_ he wonders to himself, meeting her doe eyes cautiously. Her family, Nate, even Serena- they left her to fend for herself and now she's standing here, searching for affirmation. More or less asking Dan to confirm that he does, in fact, care about her. It terrifies him.

He says, "No," and his voice shakes.

"Don't you want to?"

He notices that she makes no moves closer to him, nothing assertive like Serena usually attempts. Blair just wants a "yes" or a "no."

"Yes," he says.

She forces a smirk, satisfied, and walks away from him.

He doesn't like the way he flinches when he finds out she slept with Chuck. It bothers him, that he cares, and that someone with such little self-affirmation would choose to sleep with someone who has too much.

When she enters the loft on Thanksgiving, she looks so much like the child he saw sitting at the end of the hallway; sad and unsure, but unwilling to let her resilience falter.

He really never thought Blair Waldorf would see his bedroom.

One day they're sitting in her living room while Serena takes a shower, sweaty from her run.

It's quiet, aside from the sound of water pouring from a shower head.

"Do you like me?" Blair asks, glancing up from her book. Her legs are tucked under her skirt, curled into the corner of the couch.

"Sure," he shrugs, not sure what answer she's looking for. "I guess."

Blair sets her book down and sits up straighter, waiting for him to focus his attention on her.

"Why?" She asks.

"I don't know," Dan sets his own book down now, looking up at her. "You're smart, and sort of funny in a really cruel way and sometimes you do this thing where you-"

He pauses, half gauging her reaction and half realizing the words that are coming out of his own mouth.

"Blair, what is this about?"

She shrugs, picking up her book again and finding her spot.

"I just wanted to see what you would say."

The first time he kisses her it's her seventeenth birthday. Serena and Vanessa are so busy dueling it out for his attention that they don't even notice his attention has been on Blair all night. Nate doesn't show up and Dan has the sneaking feeling that he's not going to, meanwhile Chuck is doing anything to get his hands up her dress again.

He finds her in a bedroom, presumably hers. She sits on the edge of the bed with her face buried in her hands and Dan finds himself pulling her fingers down slowly to reveal red stained eyes and black tears trailing down her face.

He's never found her more beautiful.

"Do you like me?" she asks, and sniffles quietly against his hand.

Dan meets her eyes and nods, leaning forward to press a gentle kiss to her lips. He likes the way her lashes flutter shut. He can feel tears continue to roll down his cheek and he takes a deep breath in, pulling away from her.

Blair wipes her eyes, mascara streaking her cheeks. "Why did you do that?" She asks.

"I just wanted to," he says quietly, a heavy silence settling over them.

It was a harmless kiss. That's all it was.

But then they're sneaking around and he's pulling her into storage closets or finding her in empty classrooms and he can't keep his hands off of her because he does like her, he likes her more than he would like to admit.

Serena's telling him that they are forever, but he can't think about forever. All he can think about is right now and Blair's lips wrapped around his-

He watches her when she gets out of the car at the Bass/Van der Woodsen wedding and laughs to himself when she rams her knee into Chuck's groin. It's weird, the pride he feels seeing her all confident and powerful again, acting the way he used to fear her.

She looks beautiful, really, and she meets his eyes with the slightest of smirks on her lips. It makes his stomach twist and he can't stop thinking about it for the rest of the night.

He thinks that maybe he'll ask her to dance.

Harmless.


	2. take it all

_**A/N: I don't remember who asked for this, but somebody requested a fic where Dan reflects on his relationships with both Blair and Serena and that's what this is. It takes place about a year after 5x24. Kinda sad/depressing, but that's what Dair does to me sometimes. It's a conversation with a bartender, basically. **_

_-Let me guess, this is about a girl._

_-Two of them, actually._

Dan sits at the bar, a row of empty glasses in front of him. The writing doesn't come as easily anymore, usually ends up an endless stream of FUCK until he slams the laptop shut altogether. It's weird now, to think about high school and the person he used to be; so awkward and alone, and characteristically lonely. Maybe he's finally returning to his true self.

_-Do you want to talk about it?_

_-They loved me, I loved them. _

_-It's a little bit more complicated than that, isn't it?_

_-Yeah. _

He doesn't answer his phone anymore. In fact, he couldn't even tell you where his phone is if you asked. He figures it's under one of the many piles of useless shit in his apartment that he doesn't have the motivation to sort through. He used to have all of his stories and writings organized- which in high school meant a huge stack of ramblings about a reckless blonde with a twinkling smile who welcomed him into the Upper East Side with open arms. Next to that stack was a collection of angry scribbles about her bitchy brunette best friend whose only goal in life was to make _his _life miserable.

He starts by telling her about Serena, and the same image keeps flashing through his head. She's fifteen years old, dancing on a table at a party that he definitely was not supposed to be at. All he could think was, "_God, I love her." _Love at first sight. It's a tricky thing because you never catch everything at first sight, it takes sight after sight after sight after sight….

_-She sounds like a great girl. _

_-She is._

He doesn't know how to describe Serena, because words don't do her justice. He ripped her apart in his first book for reasons that he doesn't completely understand, because Sabrina is not the person he fell in love with. Sabrina is not Serena and yet, Serena is a lot more like Sabrina than she would care to admit. He ripped her apart, and he can still remember the look on her face when she came to him, asking, _"Do you even remember the girl you fell in love with?"_ If he would've been completely honest, he would've said, _"No, I don't." _

_-So why did you break up?_

_-Which time?_

Nate, Carter, Tripp, Aaron, Ben, ect. It gets harder and harder to love someone the less they choose you. Dan would like to say that he enjoys the chase, but it's more than that. He loved Serena and that was an aspect of his life that he thought he'd never lose, but people grow up, they change. They're not Romeo and Juliet, and if they were, they'd both be dead by now.

_-Do you miss her?_

_-Sometimes. _

He ran into Serena once after he returned from Rome. It was a complete accident, not something he would like to relive. As soon as her eyes landed on him, her face paled. His probably did the same. _"There is no us. There's only you." _No, Dan could not remember the girl he fell in love with, because she didn't exist anymore. Standing across the street from her, he had so many things he wanted to say, but he turned in the other direction and walked away before he had the chance to say any of them.

_-Wait, then who's the other girl?_

_-Her best friend._

He starts to tell the bartender about Blair, and her eyes widen, because Blair sounds like the side character in some cheesy romcom about him and Serena. Of all the people to fall in love with, he had to choose Blair Waldorf. But of course, he didn't _choose_ to fall in love with her. He was forced. She plowed over him like a bulldozer and he just lay flattened wondering if he would ever recover from her. She was everything to him. Then she was nothing to him. There's a gap in his heart where Blair was supposed to stay, forever. She probably will, but Dan doesn't like to think about that.

_-So that's it? You fell for her best friend._

_-She was the love of my life, but I wasn't hers. _

If there's anything that Dan genuinely wants, it's to forget what it feels like to love Blair. He's learned what being consumed by love feels like. He had fallen for Serena, the epitome of sunshine and all that is happy. And then he had fallen for Blair, her brunette counterpart who's heart was darkened from letting men constantly dictate her self-worth. Dan thought he could show her what it was like to be loved selflessly, to love her the way she loved everyone else in her life.

It wasn't enough.

He had been back in New York for two months when he bumped into her at a charity event, something Nate had persuaded him to attend. His breath hitched when he saw her in her flowing black gown and as much as he wanted to turn and run, he knew he would have to face her eventually. Her hand touched his arm so gingerly that it almost made him want to cry.

"How was Rome? I tried to call and email, but you never replied."

"Did you really expect me to?"

"Don't tell me you're still mad at me."

Her doe eyes made him want to melt, but he refused to let her see the overwhelming affect she still had on him.

_"I'm not mad at you, Blair. That would require me to feel something for you, and I don't. Not anymore."_

He kept his gaze locked with hers, and she swallowed carefully. In the past few years that Dan had known Blair, he had learned how to read her. He knew when she was faking a laugh, holding in a cry, biting her tongue to stop from saying something rash, everything that was important to know about the person you're dating. Blair never learned those things about Dan, and when she looked at him that night, he knew he had convinced her. She would never know the ache that was punishing his chest just from looking at her.

_-So what happened? It's just over?_

Dan never saw them after that, but he'd hear stories here and there from Nate. Blair and Serena stopped talking. They wouldn't even look at each other when attending the same gala. Blair couldn't forgive Serena for sleeping with her boyfriend, _again_. Serena couldn't forgive Blair for…yeah, Nate hadn't figured out what Serena was mad at Blair about, but nonetheless, Dan felt partially responsible for their friendship's destruction. He used to dream about being Nate Archibald, having the two most beautiful girls at Constance playing a game of tug-o-war, with him as the rope. It's not all it's cracked up to be.

He wrote his second book while he was abroad. He meant to tear Blair to pieces, to point out every flaw that he knew would destroy her emotionally, but he couldn't do it. Instead he wrote a story about a girl and her dad, incorporating every story Blair had ever told him about herself and Harold, exaggerating for comic effect, but keeping them surprisingly accurate. He drops it off at the penthouse one day, when he thinks she's at work, and leaves it on the table in the foyer.

The title is "Pumpkin Pie and Princesses" with a small note attached that said, _"I'll never tell you who you are, but this is who you'll always be to me."_

She called him crying seventeen times. Too bad he can't find his phone.


End file.
